You Still Can't Buy Belkin's More Expensive, Redesigned Thunderbolt Dock

Belkin has been developing a Thunderbolt dock for almost a year. When it showed it off at CES in January, it looked like it was almost ready to go on sale. Instead Belkin has completely redesigned it and made it $US100 more expensive. Oh, and you still can’t buy it yet.

The new version is a completely different shape to previous iterations. It packs a pair of Thunderbolt ports (one for connecting to your laptop, another for daisy-chaining extra devices), three USB 3.0 ports, a FireWire 800 port, Gigabit Ethernet, eSATA, a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adaptor, and audio in and out. Compared to the previous version, it gains USB 3.0 over 2.0, has an audio-in port, and for some reason, has lost a dedicated HDMI port.

What started out as an overpriced piece of hardware has just been redesigned to look less attractive and had its price increased to make it even more unaffordable. This new dock will sell for $US400, $US100 more than the previous model was supposed to cost. Worst of all, you still can’t buy it, and the launch date has been pushed back to September. Good job, Belkin. [Belkin via The Verge]